Over Boosting Facebook Posts Leads to Unfollows

As you explore your social media feeds on a given day, are you seeing the same Facebook or Instagram post over and over again? It’s no error; more and more businesses are boosting their posts — and it’s not limited to just advertisements.

So, if boosted posts are served up to your page’s followers over and over again, your efforts to engage with your audience just might come off as annoying. The result? Unfollows.

Too Much Boosting? The Root of the Problem

It’s no secret that getting organic content in front of your Facebook followers has become increasingly harder over the past few years. Why is this? The large amount of content competing for your followers attention has made organic visibility harder to obtain. To put it simply, there’s just too much out there for your followers to see organically. For brands that want to increase engagement on their social channels, this means boosting is imperative. But how do you ensure that your boosted content isn’t seen excessively by followers?

Combating “Post-Fatigue”…When is Enough Enough?

Frequency capping, used widely on platforms like Google Adwords, ensures that users don’t see your advertisement too many times. And seeing the same ad over and over again leads to user frustration. Unfortunately, Facebook currently does not have a feature that allows you to cap impressions of boosted posts. However, Facebook does say there are some settings in place to combat the problem of “post fatigue”. Specifically, Facebook says that it will not allow an ad to be seen in a follower’s feed more than four times in a day and a non-follower’s feed two times a day.

Tricks for Getting Around the Frequency Capping Limitations

Thankfully, we have a few tricks up our sleeves to get around Facebook’s frequency capping limitations. The first is to be mindful of the duration of your boosted post. The duration will largely depend on the size of your follower base, but limiting to one to two days is a good place to start. Team this with a strong ad placement strategy, and your message should be served to your desired audience, without being that annoying.

Another way to get around frequency capping limitations is to first boost to your followers and then switch audiences at a certain point during the campaign. To do this, simply edit the boost and yield for your desired audience.

But what if you want to reach your loyal followers as well as spread the word about your latest and greatest product? Here’s a two-step method you can try: First, boost your original post to target page followers. Then, you can go into Facebook Ads Manager and build a parallel campaign that targets a demographic outside of your following. You can even duplicate the content from the original boosted post, if you so choose. Facebook Ads Manager will give you a lot more insight into the campaign and engagement, letting you know which ads are the most effective.

There’s nothing worse than losing the trust of your followers. Your good intentions to increase engagement and awareness can cause more harm than good. Remember: Be mindful of your boosting frequency and keep your content fresh. Do that, and we’re willing to bet that you’ll see more follows than unfollows.